


not here or there but inbetween

by notquiteaghost



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Nonbinary Character, Not!Fic, Trans Characters, a sprinkling of canon typical jonmartin pining, all trans team archives, and also jon is autistic, briefly romantic jongeorgie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-08 12:18:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18623149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notquiteaghost/pseuds/notquiteaghost
Summary: a not!fic about jon sims being trans masc and non-binary and bad at self-reflection. sometimes, it takes almost thirty years to work out what your gender is.





	not here or there but inbetween

**Author's Note:**

> heads up, there's some brief allusions to internalised transphobia and infrequent references to misgendering/general cis people bullshit
> 
> also, for the first third of the fic the narration uses 'she' for jon, because it covers a period of jon's life where that's their pronoun, but i haven't made up a deadname because i Hate that trope

  * tiny baby [jon] who knows she isn't very good at being a girl but doesn't have the words to articulate why


  * her grandmother thinks kids clothes should be durable and practical so even tho jon is not a kid who climbs trees or plays football, her wardrobe is exclusively straight jeans & 'boys' t-shirts & large jumpers


  * she keeps her hair roughly shoulder length because that's the length it's always been but strangers still 'mistake' her for a boy a lot. this makes her feel a way she again hasn't got the words for


  * when she starts secondary school she continues to dress 'masc', never starts wearing makeup, never gets any interest in dating, generally fills out the checklist for everyone else assuming she's a lesbian


  * she knows she's definitely not a straight girl, so she shrugs and decides sure, she's a lesbian. it's a moot point, mostly, seeing as even if she did have any interest in dating she's the only gay person her age she knows


  * but she does get involved in some community support stuff – she spends a lot of time in the library as a teenager, and one of the librarians is a lesbian who takes jon under her wing a bit


  * coffee mornings and book clubs and things like that. sixteen year old jon and a dozen queer women all in their late twenties at the youngest. they joke a lot how often they forget jon isn't also a thirty-something


  * (this is that autism feel of having no interest in your peers but getting on great with adults)


  * and then she goes to uni, and then she meets georgie


  * georgie is a Very Out lesbian. she goes to clubs, she's heavily involved in the lgbt society, she has a rainbow flag hanging in her bedroom window. yknow.


  * jon likes her a lot, and still isn't really sure if it's romantic or not, but assumes that's more due to being gay than anything else


  * (no one has told jon about asexuality yet)


  * so when, one night when they're meant to be studying in georgie's room but instead are mostly drinking shit cheap wine and complaining about their professors, georgie looks at jon with this soft look on her face and asks to kiss her, jon says yes


  * and then they date


  * they're both living in one of those massive student houses with a thousand bedrooms crammed everywhere and only a kitchen for a communal space. georgie has lived there since coming back to finish first year, and jon moved in halfway through second year after a somewhat disastrous flatmate situation


  * so after they graduate, moving in together seems like the natural progression of things even tho they’ve only been dating for two months


  * jon is still, when asked, identifying as a lesbian and using she/her, but is also still dressing what other people now call butch. she always feels kind of weird about that term, but again, just chalks it up to the mess of complicated feelings being a gnc lesbian does genuinely involve


  * and then, _finally_ , jon meets some actual trans people


  * jon has, circumstantially, known trans people. thanks to georgie, jon goes to a lot of lgbt soc things, and is passingly familiar with most of the lgbt people on their campus


  * but there’s a big difference between nodding at someone when you see them in the library and having an actual, proper conversation about gender


  * so, jon goes to a lot of social events because georgie does. without georgie, jon would probably not leave the house except to go to work and to the library (jon is not doing postgrad. jon’s library habits do not particularly reflect this)


  * mostly at these events, jon sits in the corner and reads, and only talks to other quiet antisocial people, while georgie circles back periodically to report on her social butterfly escapades


  * and at one, one of the other quiet antisocial people is a trans guy


  * he’s called harry, and he asks about the book jon is reading, and after they’ve been talking a while he says, “sorry, you probably get this a lot, but what pronouns do you use?”


  * jon just blinks at him and says “what”


  * “well, i’m trans, so i’m always really cautious about assuming,” harry says, easily, and this does not answer the question jon was asking


  * jon.exe has crashed


  * she(?) eventually says, “uh. she? i’ve never– she”


  * and harry, who has spent the last forty minutes discussing dante with jon and is already sure they’re going to be friends, says “want the trans 101? you’re making a face like you need it”


  * three hours later georgie finally reappears with the intent to actually interrupt (she’s drifted past periodically, but jon was always deep in conversation with harry, so she left them alone) and get going, and jon gets harry’s email address and is then very quiet as they walk arm-in-arm back to their house


  * just as they turn onto their street, jon says, “i, ah. i think i might be trans?”


  * georgie, who has for the past couple months been having something of a crisis after realising she definitely _loves_ jon but she isn’t _in_ love and she can’t figure out _why_ , says “oh thank god”


  * jon, very bemused, “that wasn’t the reaction i was expecting”


  * “i think we should break up,” georgie replies, and jon stops walking. they’re four feet from their front door, but it’s late, no one’s about, so georgie decides sure, they can have this conversation in the street


  * “you– because i’m trans?”


  * “i love you, i really do,” georgie steps closer, takes jon’s hands in hers, “but i’m not _in_ love with you. and it was driving me crazy trying to figure out why, but if you’re not a girl–”


  * “i can’t tell if i should be offended by this or not,” jon says, somewhat dazed, “i’ve been trans for an hour, georgie, i don’t know if this is transphobic yet”


  * georgie laughs, and presses a kiss to jon’s cheek, and says “it’s nearly midnight, we both have work tomorrow, let’s table this for later. we can look up names and what word i should use when i complain to other people how you always leave your shoes in the middle of the floor when we aren’t both on the verge of passing out”


  * and that sounds reasonable, so jon nods, and kisses georgie on the mouth, and then they go inside


  * the next day jon stops by the library on the way home from work and checks out almost every baby names book they have. georgie comes home and he’s sat at the kitchen table making a spreadsheet


  * “you don’t _have_ to make it this complicated, you know,” she says, hooking her chin over his shoulder to read what he’s already got. the spreadsheet has a lot of columns.


  * “it’s my _name_ ,” he retorts, and she hums agreeably, then points to ‘jonathan’, which has relatively few ticks in any pro columns (god, this nerd), and says, “isn’t that your grandfather’s name?”


  * it is. he doesn’t talk about his grandfather a lot – doesn’t talk about his family a lot full stop, but she knows, even though he died when jon was still a toddler, the stories his grandmother told had a significant impact


  * “my parents didn’t name me after anyone,” jon says, quietly


  * georgie nods. she doesn’t say they’re not here now to offer an opinion, because that’s far harsher than jon deserves to hear, and it’s not like she ever needs to remind him of it either. he’s definitely already beating himself up for taking so long to come to this realisation there’s no one left around to tell him how they’d have reacted


  * “i think it suits you,” she says instead, and jon nods, and then she moves away to make a pot of tea and some pasta (it’s technically jon’s night to cook, but she was anticipating coming home to find him already hyperfocused beyond the point of no return)


  * a week later, jon looks up from the spreadsheet to where georgie is curled up on the sofa reading and says “ugh, fine, you win, you were right”


  * (georgie hadn’t pressed her point any further, jon is just like that)


  * “jon?” she asks, and he makes an exasperated noise and nods, then closes his laptop dramatically and stands. most of his spine pops when he stretches


  * “this calls for celebration” georgie says, also standing, “franco’s or monsoon?”


  * “franco’s. i’m going to eat a pizza the size of a _car_ ”


  * so then jon is actually going by jon, and using he/him, and isn’t dating georgie anymore but is still living with her and spending most of his time with her and factoring her into all his major decisions


  * he talks to harry, and other (binary) trans people, and reads a lot of blogs, and after a few months gets a referral to charing cross gic


  * by the time he starts at the magnus institute, he’s had top surgery and has been on T for years, and passes as cis completely, and he doesn’t know how to articulate it but this is. bothering him.


  * he’s not exactly… he likes being stealth, he doesn’t need to flaunt his personal life. he can understand the impulse, but he doesn’t share it. his feelings about gender and romance are no one’s business but his own


  * but. everyone assuming he was a girl _itched_ – being miss simms, georgie’s girlfriend, she, it felt like wearing a coarse knitted jumper. it was exhausting


  * and, for a while, everyone assuming he was a man was a relief. it didn’t make his skin crawl, it didn’t make him want to scream, it was _nice_. it felt good


  * it didn’t feel _right_. but it didn’t feel bad, either, and jon has never been gendered in a way that felt right. he thought that was just part of being trans


  * except. he moves to london, and he starts at the magnus institute, and he wears shirts and slacks, and the long skirts and patterned dresses some of his colleagues wear keep catching his eye the way men in three-piece suits used to, and that _terrifies_ him


  * he was lucky, in a way, having no family left to care when he transitioned – if anyone reacted negatively, he could just cut them out of his life, and his social circle was already queer enough that was hardly necessary


  * but that doesn’t mean he escaped internalising a whole swathe of shit about what being trans _should_ mean and how he _should_ act and what he _should_ want and if he wants to wear skirts then is he even a man? was he making it up all along after all?


  * naturally, he deals with this by ignoring it. he’s a man, men don’t wear skirts, he doesn’t wear skirts, that’s that.


  * he manages to keep that up until he’s made head archivist, and he’s given three assistants who are all also trans


  * (he doesn’t know if elias did it on purpose. elias knows he’s trans, of course, because he’s never bothered to get the name on his diploma changed, but the way elias reacted lead jon to assume elias may also be trans. and if that’s true, then selecting only trans people for the archives staff feels like a kindness more than anything)


  * and, the thing about them all being trans, is even if jon and martin are both rather fond of being stealth, and sasha and tim aren’t used to being out at work, and none of them are exactly friends, they’re the only people who ever come in the archives, so the archives very quickly becomes the Safe Trans Zone


  * they all vent a lot about cis people. sasha will walk in and the first words out her mouth will be “the next person to ask me if i’d had the surgery is getting their own surgery when i cut their _tongues out_ ”, and tim will make a commiserating noise and offer her the pack of donuts martin brought in


  * so when, on one of the rare afternoons when jon leaves his office to lean against tim’s desk and brainstorm organisational system ideas, martin walks back from the break room upstairs with a scowl and says, bitterly, as he sits back down, “oh so when _cis_ guys wear nail polish it’s _inspiring_ and _breaking down gender roles_ but when _i_ wear nail polish, jenny from HR gets to side eye me and ask if that means i _changed my mind_ , because surely _i’m_ the one who’ll do that and not all the men who _didn’t_ have to do hours of therapy to establish they are definitely, one hundred percent for _sure_ a guy!”


  * tim and sasha both make the standard commiseration noises, and sasha says something about the supervisor at her last job trying to say it wasn’t _appropriate_ for her to wear trousers, and jon stops listening and ~~runs away~~ moves back to his office


  * he hadn’t noticed martin is wearing nail polish, is the thing. or, he had noticed it, but he hadn’t thought about it, and now he’s thinking about it. he’s thinking about it a lot


  * martin had– martin is a guy. martin is definitely a guy, if something of a feminine-leaning gay guy, the kind of feminine-leaning no one ever questions in cis guys, and it hadn’t occurred to jon to question martin, either, even though he’s trans, and. and.


  * he’s still circling round a revelation he can’t quite make himself have an hour or so later, when martin sticks his head round the door


  * “you, uh. you alright?” martin asks, incredibly tentatively. it says a lot, jon thinks, about how nice martin is, that he’s asking even though there’s a 90% chance jon will tell him to fuck off “you kind of disappeared abruptly, earlier. i didn’t upset you, did i?”


  * jon stares at him for a long moment, then says, “can i see your nail polish?”


  * “oh!” martin’s cheeks flush, just slightly, as he steps inside the office and lets the door shut behind him “uh, yeah, of course. it’s a little chipped, now, but, yeah”


  * martin’s nail polish is a light, pastel blue. it’s neat, and even, though his nails aren’t that long, and jon thinks he remembers martin saying something about mostly painting his nails to try and get himself to stop biting them. jon’s never really gone for nail polish, but it’s. nice.


  * “it’s, uh. it’s a good colour, on you,” he says awkwardly. martin flushes even more


  * “oh, um, thanks? did– _are_ you alright?”


  * if jon was a different kind of person, this is where he’d open up to martin, and this would be the beginning of them becoming actual friends


  * jon is jon, though, so he just shoves all his emotions back in the box they escaped from, nods, and says “i didn’t sleep that well, is all. not really up to socialising”


  * (an aside about s1 jonmartin dynamic: jon is very good at shittalking martin when martin isn’t around, but in the face of martin’s genuine care and concern, he defaults back to a far more friendlier tone than he’s aiming for. he knows, on a level, that he and martin could be good friends if he ever got his shit together, but that is something else he’s currently repressing. he doesn’t need friends! he isn’t desperate for social contact at all! what’s loneliness!)


  * martin says “ah, okay, i’ll just– i’ll leave you alone, then”, and then jon makes himself focus on work, and then when he gets home he opens the group chat he’s still, thankfully, in with the trans people who got him through his first gender crisis and sends ‘help i don’t know if i’m a guy after all’


  * three people immediately send back a link to nonbinary.org


  * and that’s the rest of jon’s evening


  * he reads through every article. he reads several articles multiple times. he opens several new tabs, and gets a notepad to make a list of books, and eventually remembers to reply in the group chat


  * a week later, he bites the bullet and writes an email to georgie


  * nothing long, just, they still tell each other about big life events


  * and then, another couple weeks after that, when martin brings him tea, he says, “ah, martin, could i– do you have a moment?”


  * “of course,” martin says, and lets the door swing closed again, “what do you need?”


  * “i, ah. this isn’t very professional, so, you don’t– you are perfectly welcome to say no, of course, but i. um. would you– come clothes shopping with me?”


  * (ideally, jon would have asked georgie, but as much as he loves her (still), they haven’t talked properly in years, and she is cis. the best cis person he knows, but still a cis person. and he’d just, rather have a trans person, for emotional support, and no one in the group chat lives particularly nearby anymore) (or, well, some of them do, but when he asked they all told him to get over himself and ask one of his ‘lovely’ coworkers)


  * (why does he ask martin and not sasha?) (well, dear reader, he is nursing the beginnings of a crush) (not that he knows it. but that’s absolutely what’s happening here. martin is sweet and lovely and jon definitely finds him annoying and overbearing. yes. nothing else. no other emotions.) (his chest feels all weird when martin smiles because he doesn’t like him. that always happens around people he dislikes.)


  * “oh!” martin says, surprised. “uh, yes, of course, is– is there an event or something…?”


  * jon takes a moment to stare at the wall above martin’s head before he makes himself say, “i. am non-binary, and i need– different clothes.”


  * “oh, god, have we been–”


  * “no, no, this is a, a very recent development. he is still fine,” jon says, quickly, then pauses, then adds, more haltingly, “i think. i might, if – they, as well, maybe? just, to see"


  * “of course. d’you want me to tell tim and sasha?”


  * martin, jon thinks, is maybe not all that bad. “yes, please”


  * “cool,” martin smiles, “i’m free this weekend? for shopping?”


  * “this saturday would be good, yes”


  * and then jon and martin go shopping! it’s probably not that successful of a shopping trip, because it takes jon like four shops before they admit what exactly it is they’re looking for, but they go to several charity shops and have fun trying to one-up each other with the most ridiculous/inexplicable item of clothing, and at the end of the day jon has three skirts (a knee-length black a-line skirt, a full-length black skirt, and a full-length black skirt patterned with red flowers), two necklaces, and a skater dress they probably can’t get away with wearing to work, but they really liked the way the skirt moved when they spun


  * other things that happen include lunch at a cafe where the staff definitely think they’re on a date and only martin notices and also martin is _dying_ , both of them only managing to walk past a secondhand bookshop twice before they cave and go inside, and then emerge half an hour later both holding three books (two poetry anthologies and a sci fi novel; a psychology book and two history books), and martin somehow talking jon into trying on skinny jeans and then, again, leaving this mortal coil


  * jon doesn’t buy the skinny jeans, which is for the best really


  * the first time jon wears one of the skirts to work, sasha does a victory lap around the archives because “hell yes skirts are so much more comfortable, and now you swish! tim you should get a skirt. skirts for archives uniform”


  * and jon is still a prickly antisocial bastard but now he’s an outly nonbinary prickly antisocial bastard, and sometimes they walk into the archives at 2PM smelling faintly of tobacco and holding a bottle of vodka, and then the archives staff all do shots and dramatic readings of the most ridiculous fake statements, because sometimes that’s how you cope with cis people, and that’s valid



**Author's Note:**

> i'm [here](http://notquiteaghost.tumblr.com) on tumblr. come talk to me about jongeorgie and how everyone is trans
> 
> if you want to use this as the basis for an actual, proper fic you have my full permission, just link back to this and let me know somehow. i'm certainly never going to write it. writing is very hard, y'all
> 
> THIS FIC HAS [ART](https://picknicksizzle.tumblr.com/post/190536311610/little-scene-from-this-really-really-cute-fic-by) NOW!!! IT'S SO GOOD LOOK AT IT


End file.
